Global Poker Review And Bonus Code February 2021 - BestBetUSA

Team has been involved in a substantial number of the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries’ most significant merger and acquisition transactions, holding key positions at, and transacting with Scientific Games Corp, Inspired Gaming Group, FOX Bets, Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts International Holdings, PokerStars, DraftKings, Mohegan Sun, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Harrah’s Entertainment, Tropicana Entertainment, Inc., TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming, Facebook, Inc, Wynn Resorts, Dubai World/MGM Resorts
Here's all the Bios. These guys are stellar! TEKK closed at $10.30 today. Still cheap!
If you don't like to read... you don't like to make money!!!!
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Matthew Davey — Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as experience in the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member. He has served in executive management positions across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he oversaw more than ten mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2 billion in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led.
Most recently, Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV: NYX), where Mr. Davey served as Chief Executive Officer and Director. The NYX acquisition provided Scientific Games with a vehicle to significantly accelerate the scale and breadth of its existing digital gaming business, including the strategic expansion into sports betting. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of NYX, Mr. Davey developed and implemented a corporate strategy that generated strong revenue growth. Mr. Davey shaped company strategy to focus on digital gaming supplier platforms and content that provided various gaming operators with the underlying gaming and sports betting systems for their online gaming business. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and his experience in the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries helped NYX recognize momentum as a public company. After the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as one of the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. These acquisitions included:
• OpenBet: In 2016, NYX completed the $385 million acquisition of OpenBet. This was one of the more complex and transformative acquisitions that Mr. Davey oversaw at NYX. Through securing co-investments from William Hill (LSE: WMH), Sky Betting & Gaming and The Stars Group (formerly Nasdaq: TSG, TSX: TSGI), Mr. Davey was able to get the acquisition from Vitruvian Partners completed successfully, winning the deal against much larger and well capitalized competitors. By combining two established and proven B2B betting and gaming suppliers, NYX was well positioned to provide customers with exciting player-driven solutions across all major product verticals and distribution channels. This allowed NYX to become the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform.
• Cryptologic/Chartwell: In 2015, NYX completed the $119 million acquisition of Cryptologic and Chartwell. The acquisition provided NYX with more than 400 titles of additional leading gaming content, a broader customer base, and direct exposure to PokerStars and Intercasino, part of the Gamesys Group (LSE: GYS) — two of the world’s largest online casino offerings.
• OnGame: In 2014, NYX completed the distressed acquisition of OnGame, a premier poker content, platform and service provider. This acquisition provided NYX with one of the best poker products in the industry, access to several regulated jurisdictions, and a valuable talent pool that was instrumental in the growth of NYX. The addition of OnGame further established a path for NYX to continue its growth in both European and U.S. markets.
These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017. During that time, Mr. Davey helped build NYX to have over 200 customers in the global gaming industry and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey’s success at NYX ultimately led to its sale to Scientific Games for $631 million in 2018.
Mr. Davey joined Next Gen Gaming, the predecessor to NYX, in 2000 as the Vice President of Technology, was appointed as Executive Director in 2003 and named Chief Executive Officer in 2005. Prior to that, he was the Senior Consultant for Access Systems, a company that specializes in the provision of back-end software for licensed online casinos. Prior to joining Access, Mr. Davey worked for the Northern Territory Government specializing in matters pertaining to the internet and e-commerce along with roles in the Department of Racing and Gaming. Mr. Davey received a Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Northern Territory University, Australia (also known as Charles Darwin University).
Robin Chhabra — President
Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) and William Hill, and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and, from 2019 to August 2020, he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective with revenues of over $2.5 billion. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across the digital gaming value chain and includes the following:
• TSG/Flutter Entertainment Merger: In 2019, Mr. Chhabra led the TSG M&A team that was responsible for TSG’s $12.2 billion merger with Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR). The merger between TSG and Flutter Entertainment is the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. The combination created the largest publicly listed online gaming company with approximately 13 million active customers and leading product offerings, which include sports betting, online casino, fantasy sports and poker. The combined entity includes some of the world’s most iconic digital gaming brands such as Fanduel, Fox Bet, Sky Bet, PaddyPower, Betfair, PokerStars and SportsBet. TSG/Flutter Entertainment is one of the most geographically diverse digital gaming and media companies with leading positions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Georgia.
• TSG/Sky Betting and Gaming (“SBG”): In 2018, Mr. Chhabra led the acquisition of SBG from CVC Capital Partners and Sky plc, Europe’s largest media company, in a transaction valued at $4.7 billion. At the time of the acquisition SBG was the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing of the major operators having doubled its online market share in three years. The acquisition of SBG provided TSG with (a) greater revenue diversification, significantly enhanced expertise and exposure to sports betting just ahead of the judicial overturn of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) by the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) a leading position within the United Kingdom, the world’s largest regulated online gaming market, (c) improved products and technology as a result of the addition of SBG’s innovative casino and sports book offerings and a portfolio of popular mobile apps, and (d) expertise in deeply integrating sports betting with leading sports media companies, positioning TSG to create more engaging content, deliver faster growth and decrease customer acquisition costs.
• William Hill (LSE: WMH): At William Hill, from 2010 to 2017, Mr. Chhabra served as Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Development where he led several transactions which contributed to William Hill’s transformation from a land-based gambling operator in the United Kingdom to a leading online-led international business. Mr. Chhabra led William Hill’s entry into the U.S. sports betting and online lottery markets with the acquisition of four businesses, including the simultaneous acquisitions of three U.S. sportsbooks, Cal Neva, American Wagering and Brandywine Bookmaking, in 2011 for an aggregate purchase price of $55 million. These businesses ultimately led William Hill to achieve a leading position in the U.S. sports betting market with a market share of 24% in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Chhabra played a key role in structuring William Hill’s successful joint venture with PlayTech Plc (LSE: PTEC) in 2008. The combined entity created one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe at the time of its formation and led to William Hill’s buyout of Playtech’s interest for $637 million in 2013. Prior to the transaction, William Hill had struggled in its attempt to establish a strong online gaming platform and a meaningful presence outside the United Kingdom.
Mr. Chhabra has also successfully completed four transactions worth over $1.2 billion in Australia, the world’s second largest regulated online gambling market, and various partnerships in Asia. Additionally, he completed several technology and media related transactions, including William Hill’s investment in NYX, where he worked with Mr. Davey on NYX’s transformational acquisition of OpenBet.
Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Eric Matejevich — Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Trustee and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (formerly Revel Casino, which had a construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million.
Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s many acquisitions and multiple debt refinancings to simplify its capital structure and provided liquidity for growth initiatives. Additionally, Mr. Matejevich was instrumental to the executive team that sold NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million.
Prior to NYX, from 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the Chief Financial Officer of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino, a property under the Resorts International Holdings umbrella — a Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY) entity. As Chief Financial Officer, he provided managerial oversight for all finance functions for a six-property casino company with annual gaming revenue exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. Mr. Matejevich led the transition effort to integrate a four-casino, $1.3 billion acquisition from Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR). As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he lobbied for and was successful in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States. The Atlantic Club was the sole New Jersey casino proponent of the legislation.
Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Our Board of Directors
Morris Bailey — Chairman
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bailey has been a leader in turning around Atlantic City, as well as being among the first gaming executives to embrace online gaming and sports betting in the United States. In his efforts, Mr. Bailey partnered with two of the largest digital gaming companies in the world, PokerStars, part of the Stars Group, and DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG). In 2010, Mr. Bailey bought Resorts Atlantic City (“Resorts”) and initiated a comprehensive renovation which allowed for the property to be rebranded and repositioned. In 2012, Mr. Bailey signed an agreement with Mohegan Sun to manage the day-to-day operations of the casino. In addition to Mohegan Sun’s operational expertise and ability to reduce costs via economies of scale, Resorts gained access to their robust customer database. Soon thereafter, Mr. Bailey and his team focused on bringing online gaming to the property. In 2015, Resorts established a platform to engage in online gaming by partnering with PokerStars, now part of the $24 billion Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR), to operate an online poker room in Atlantic City. In 2018, Resorts announced deals with DraftKings and SBTech to open a sportsbook on-property and online. For 2020 year-to-date, Resorts has performed in the top quartile in internet gross gaming revenue in New Jersey. Mr. Bailey’s efforts in New Jersey helped set the framework for expansion of online sports and gaming throughout the United States.
In addition to his gaming interests, Mr. Bailey has over 50 years of experience in all facets of real estate development, asset M&A, capital markets and operations and is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of JEMB Realty, a leading real estate development, investment and management organization. Mr. Bailey has notable investment experience within the energy, finance and telecommunications sectors through investments in the Astoria Energy Plant, Basis Investment Group and Xentris Wireless.
Tony Rodio — Director Nominee
Mr. Rodio has nearly four decades of experience in the gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Rodio served as the Chief Executive Officer and director of Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) (Nasdaq: CZR), one of the world’s most diversified casino-entertainment providers and the most geographically diverse U.S. casino-entertainment company, from April 2019 until its acquisition by Eldorado Resorts, Inc. in July 2020. Mr. Rodio led Caesars through its $17.3 billion merger with Eldorado Resorts, one of the largest transactions in the gaming industry to date. Additionally, Mr. Rodio was instrumental to Caesars’ expansion into the digital gaming industry and oversaw the implementation of new digital segments such as its Scientific Games powered retail sportsbook solution that now operates in various states throughout the U.S. From October 2018 to May 2019, Mr. Rodio served as Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Gaming. Prior to Affinity Gaming, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Tropicana Entertainment, Inc. (“Tropicana”) for over seven years, where he was responsible for the operation of eight casino properties in seven different jurisdictions. During his time at Tropicana, Mr. Rodio oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the company, improving overall financial results with net revenue that increased more than 50% driven by both operational improvements and expansion across regional markets. Mr. Rodio led major capital projects, including the complete renovation of Tropicana Atlantic City and Tropicana’s move to land-based operations in Evansville, Indiana. Each of these initiatives, among others, generated substantial value for Tropicana. Ultimately, Mr. Rodio’s efforts at Tropicana led to its sale to Eldorado Resorts in 2018 for $1.85 billion. Prior to Tropicana, Mr. Rodio held a succession of executive positions in Atlantic City for casino brands, including Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Entertainment (predecessor to Caesars), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Penn National Gaming. He has also served as a director of several professional and charitable organizations, including Atlantic City Alliance, United Way of Atlantic County, the Casino Associations of New Jersey and Indiana, AtlantiCare Charitable Foundation and the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism. Mr. Rodio brings extensive knowledge of and experience in the gaming industry, operational expertise, and a demonstrated ability to effectively design and implement company strategy. Mr. Rodio received a Bachelor of Science from Rider University and a Master of Business Administration from Monmouth University.
Marlon Goldstein — Director Nominee
Mr. Goldstein is a licensed attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in the gaming space. He joined The Stars Group (Nasdaq: TSG)(TSX: TSGI) in January 2014 as its Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary until his retirement from the company in July 2020 following the merger of TSG with Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR). Mr. Goldstein also previously served as the Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of TSG. Mr. Goldstein was also the senior TSG executive based in the United States and was one of the primary architects of TSG’s strategic vision for its U.S.-facing business. During his tenure, TSG grew from an approximately $500 million market-cap company to an approximately $7 billion market-cap company through a combination of organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goldstein participated in numerous M&A transactions and capital markets offerings at TSG, including several transformational transactions in the digital gaming industry. Notable transactions in which Mr. Goldstein was involved include:
• TSG/Flutter Merger: In 2019, TSG merged with Flutter for a $12.2 billion transaction value, the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date.
• TSG/Fox Bet Partnership: In 2019, TSG entered into a partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet in the U.S., a leading U.S. online gaming business. Wall Street Research estimates an approximate $1.1 billion valuation for Fox Bet post-partnership with The Stars Group.
• TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming: In 2018, TSG acquired Sky Betting & Gaming, the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom at the time, for $4.7 billion.
• TSG/CrownBet and William Hill: In 2018, TSG simultaneously acquired CrownBet and William Hill, two Australian operators, for a total of $621 million in a multi-part transaction.
• TSG/PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker: In 2014, TSG acquired The Rational Group, which operated PokerStars and Full Tilt and was the world’s largest poker business, for $4.9 billion.
Through his ability to legally structure large and complex transactions, Mr. Goldstein was integral to TSG’s vision of becoming a full-service online gaming company. Additionally, he assisted in structuring TSG’s capital markets activity, which generated liquidity for acquisitions and strengthened its balance sheet.
Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Goldstein was a principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig P.A., where he practiced for almost 13 years. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focused on corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, and financing transactions. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein was the founder and co-chair of the firm’s Gaming Practice, a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys representing owners, operators and developers of gaming facilities, manufacturers and suppliers of gaming devices, investment banks and lenders in financing transactions, and Indian tribes in the development and financing of gaming facilities.
Mr. Goldstein brings experience and insight that we believe will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target business. Mr. Goldstein received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Emory University and a Juris Doctorate with highest honors from the University of Florida, College of Law.
Sean Ryan — Director Nominee
Mr. Ryan is a digital media and technology operator with extensive global experience in online payments, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile ad networks, digital games, enterprise collaboration platforms, blockchain, real money gaming and online music. Since 2014, Mr. Ryan has been serving as Vice President of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) (Nasdaq: FB), where he leads a more than 500 person global organization that manages the Payments, Commerce, Novi/Blockhain, Workplace and Audience Network businesses. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ryan was hired in 2011 as the Director of Games Partnerships to lead and grow the global Games business at Facebook. While the Director of Games Partnerships, Mr. Ryan focused on re-shaping Facebook’s games and monetization strategies to derive more value for Facebook, its users and its partners, including the addition of a Real Money Gaming offering in regulated markets. Mr. Ryan’s team helped accelerate a major trend in engagement through cross-platform games and therefore the opportunity to increase users through establishing games on multiple platforms. Prior to joining Facebook, Mr. Ryan created the new social and mobile games division at News Corp, an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch. While at News Corp, Mr. Ryan led the acquisition of Making Fun, a San Francisco social-game start-up, that created News Corp’s games publishing division.
Before joining News Corp., Mr. Ryan founded multiple digital businesses such as Twofish, Meez, Open Wager and SingShot Media. Mr. Ryan co-founded Twofish in 2009, a virtual goods and services platform that provided developers with data analytics and insights for individual application’s digital economies. Twofish was later sold to online payments provider Live Gamer, where Mr. Ryan served on the board of directors. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Ryan founded and led Meez.com, a social entertainment service combining avatars, web games and virtual worlds. The white label social casino gaming company Open Wager was spun out of Meez and was later sold to VGW Holdings, Mr. Ryan also co-founded SingShot Media, an online karaoke community, which was sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) and merged into its Sims division.
We believe Mr. Ryan’s experience will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target and would provide an expanded perspective on the digital gaming landscape. Mr. Ryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tom Roche — Director Nominee
Mr. Roche has more than 40 years of experience in the gaming industry as a regulator, advisor and independent auditor. Mr. Roche joined Ernst & Young (“EY”) as a partner in 2003 and opened its Las Vegas office. He was subsequently appointed as the Office Managing Partner and Global Gaming Industry Market Leader. In 2016, Mr. Roche relocated to the EY Hong Kong office to supervise the expansion of the EY Global Gaming Industry practice in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Roche has been integral to numerous transactions that have shaped the current gaming landscape, including:
• Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) initial public offering: Mr. Roche was the lead partner on Wynn Resort’s initial public offering, which raised $450 million in 2002.
• Harrah’s Entertainment/Apollo Management Group & Texas Pacific Group: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory advisory services on the buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company at the time, for $17.1 billion.
• Dubai World/MGM Resorts: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory and due diligence advisory services to Dubai World in its approximately $5.1 billion investment in MGM. Dubai World bought 28.4 million MGM shares, or 9.5 percent of the casino operator, for $2.4 billion. It then invested $2.7 billion to acquire a 50% stake in MGM’s CityCenter Project, a $7.4 billion 76-acre Las Vegas development of hotels, condos and retail outlets.
• MGM Growth Properties (NYSE: MGP) initial public offering: Mr. Roche provided tax and structural transaction services to MGM Resorts in the creation of MGM Growth Properties, a publicly traded REIT engaged in the acquisition, ownership and leasing of large-scale destination entertainment and leisure resorts. MGM Growth Properties raised $1.05 billion in its 2016 initial public offering.
Mr. Roche also directed EY advisory services to boards and management teams for profit improvement and technology related initiatives. In addition, Mr. Roche provided advisory support to the American Gaming Association on several research projects, including those specifically related to sports betting, the revocation of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) and anti-money laundering best practices in the gaming industry. Equally, he has assisted government agencies in numerous international locations with enhancing their regulatory approach to governing the industry especially in the online gambling sector.
Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Roche served as Deloitte’s National Gaming Industry Leader and as the co-head of Andersen’s Gaming Industry Practice in Las Vegas. In 1989, Mr. Roche was appointed by then Governor of the State of Nevada, Robert Miller, to serve as one of three members of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board for a four-year term, where he was directly responsible for the Audit and New Games Lab Divisions. As a board member, he spent a substantial amount of time assisting global jurisdiction regulators enact gaming legislation in the design of their regulatory structure. During his career, Roche has been involved in numerous public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. His background includes providing casino regulatory consulting services to casino licensees and to federal and state agencies including the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and industry associations such as the Nevada Resort Association and the American Gaming Association.
We believe Mr. Roche’s highly regarded reputation as a gaming auditor and advisor in the gaming industry will be valuable for us and a potential business combination target. Mr. Roche is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is licensed by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy and Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

[Alfa-Bank (Mikhail Fridman) - - -> NTechLab/FindFace http://archive.is/41bFq- - -> Trump Tower...]
[“Someone high in the Russian government wanted a communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump Transition Team.” – TIME (2019)]
TIME—Questions Remain About Putin's Request for a Back Channel to the Trump Transition
(5/21/2019) ”A few weeks before Donald Trump became president, Russian banker Petr Aven, a billionaire oligarch with Moscow’s Alfa Bank, pulled aside Washington lobbyist Richard Burt at a corporate meeting in Luxembourg with a sensitive request.
Aven told Burt that ‘someone high in the Russian government’ wanted ‘a communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump Transition Team’ according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recently released report. Aven wanted Burt, a former ambassador who had helped Trump’s campaign, to work on setting it up.
Burt later told Mueller’s team that the request was, in the words of the report, ‘outside the normal realm’, even for Burt, a well-traveled Washington insider who had worked with Aven for years. It looks even more remarkable now.
The ‘high’ Russian official was none other than President Vladimir Putin, Mueller’s team would later learn. Amid what Mueller called a ‘flurry of Russian activity’ during the Trump transition, the Aven outreach is the only publicly known instance in which Putin, a onetime KGB spy, was personally involved in directing Russia’s clandestine efforts with the incoming administration.
The surreptitious contacts involving Putin, Aven and Burt as described in the Mueller report contradict repeated assertions by Alfa Bank that it had no contacts with Trump or people around him. At the time of Trump’s election, Alfa Bank was at the center of a mystery over an unexplained surge in computer traffic from Moscow to the Trump Organization in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. Computer analysts concluded that Alfa Bank had developed a covert communications channel to the Trump Organization.” http://web.archive.org/web/20190731064842/https://time.com/5592739/donald-trump-petr-aven-alfa-bank
[In late July 2016 NTechLab conducted the first test of FaceN biometric algorithm on members of the public at the annual Alfa Future People Festival (Alfa-Bank), a Burning Man style event in Russia. NTechLab used the image database to demonstrate the use of FindFace software for potential clients/investors.
In late July 2016 an independent team of data scientists were monitoring server traffic at Trump Tower in the wake of the DNC data breach. The hackers found something that has never been fully explained or understood since—data of an unknown and suspicious nature being transferred to a Trump Tower server. Upon close investigation the source of the anomalous communication was traced to a server inside Russia belonging to Alfa-Bank...]
•Forbes (Russia)—Face to face: Russian face recognition startups go global (12/5/2016) “Most of the usual users got to know the technology of face recognition thanks to FindFace. However, the founders of the company do not hide that the launch of the service was a thoughtful marketing move. The company does not plan to earn the existing part of the revenue from the mass audience. ‘We wanted to show everyone a modern level of technology development,’ [Alexander] Kabakov† explains. ‘Access was paid for not to heavily load our servers, so the revenue from the application is minimal.’ NTechLab also has two solutions: the cloud FindFace Cloud API and the licensed FindFace Enterprise Server SDK. The first commercial contract was signed by NTechLab with Alfa-Bank† and VimpelCom. Visitors to the festival of electronic music Alfa Future People with the help of FindFace could find their photos among hundreds of others by sending a selfie to a chat bot. ‘For three days, the bot received about 12,000 requests, and in response, he sent 30,500 pictures from AFP photographers,’ says Snezhana Chernogortseva, Strategic Marketing Director of VimpelCom.” http://www.forbes.ru/tehnologii/333977-licom-k-licu-rossiyskie-startapy-po-raspoznavaniyu-lic-vyhodyat-na-mirovoy-uroven (http://archive.is/y9gEt) [Translated] †[😐 Alexander (Aleksandr) Kabakov: NTechLab/FindFace founder (2015), VP of Special Projects (social media) at Mail.Ru (2017) during Facebook “image scraping” massive data collection, Agency One digital communications (founding partner, 2010), political scientist, online presidential campaign manager (Prokhorov/“Right Cause” 2012, Putin/“United Russia” 2018) http://bit.ly/2uwKVfb http://bit.ly/2TIDRpC; http://bit.ly/2HVjLWX; http://bit.ly/2JHsVcb]
•The Rachael Maddow Show—New look at Trump Org server mystery suggests avenues of inquiry (10/9/2018) “Dexter Filkins, contributor to The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known about unusual communication between a Trump Organization computer server and a server at Russia's Alfa Bank, and what more some well-placed subpoenas could find out.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-look-at-trump-org-server-mystery-suggests-avenues-of-inquiry-1340582467598 (http://archive.is/i5g92)
•Financial Times—Skadden’s oligarch work comes into focus after Mueller charges (2/23/2018) “Mikhail Fridman, the Ukrainian-born billionaire and co-founder of Alfa Group, would rely on Skadden in his battles with the British government and with BP, the UK oil and gas group. Roman Abramovich [http://facebook.com/story/graphql_permalink/?graphql_id=UzpfSTEwMDAwMDQyNTc3Mzc1MDpWSzoyNDAwMTU2MjA2ODk2MjM5], the Russian billionaire, trusted the firm so much that he made the head of its European operations the chairman of Chelsea football club after he acquired the team in 2003. After almost three decades of relationship building and profit making with the toughest businessmen to emerge from the ruins of the Soviet Union, the firm has found itself under the spotlight as the US Department of Justice investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, Alex van der Zwaan, a former London-based Skadden associate, pleaded guilty in a Washington DC court to lying to government prosecutors investigating the lobbying activities of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in Ukraine. Mr. van der Zwaan’s prosecution by Robert Mueller, special counsel, is connected to a report Skadden wrote in 2012 for the Ukrainian government as part of a PR campaign allegedly orchestrated by Mr. Manafort. The report continues to haunt the firm six years later. Skadden would advise the oligarch in his successful court battle with Boris Berezovsky, his one-time friend and mentor who fled Russia in 2000 after clashing with Vladimir Putin. Skadden’s fees in the Berezovsky case in 2012 were a reported £35m. Mr. Buck became chairman of Chelsea after advising on Mr. Abramovich’s £140m takeover in 2003. Mr. Buck, now retired from Skadden, declined to comment for this article. He once rejected the label of ‘Abramovich’s right-hand man’ and instead called himself ‘the little-toe-on-the-left-foot man’. The firm also forged a relationship with Mikhail Fridman, acting for the AAR consortium that included Mr. Fridman and German Khan, a Russian-Ukrainian billionaire, in its battle with BP in 2011. Skadden later represented Mr Fridman when the UK government forced his L1 investment vehicle to sell gasfields in the North Sea. The firm gained a reputation for handling knotty and difficult corporate deals. Pavel Malyi, the firm’s first hire in Moscow who later served as chief financial officer of Sibur, the gas processing and petrochemical company, said Skadden would be his first call for tricky transactions in Russia. A lawyer who saw the firm’s litigators in action called them ‘tough, smart and savvy’. But Skadden’s involvement in Ukraine’s turbulent politics proved less sure-footed. In 2012, Mr. Manafort, the American lobbyist and later campaign manager for Donald Trump, helped arrange a report by Skadden for the Moscow-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych, former president of Ukraine. US investigators have taken an interest in the case as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Mr. Gates’ and Mr. Manafort’s dealings in Ukraine. On Thursday, Mr. Mueller filed new charges of fraud and tax evasion against the pair. Mr. Manafort has denied wrongdoing. Mr. Gates is expected to plead guilty on Friday to conspiracy against the US and making a false statement The Ukraine report has been thrust into the spotlight once again because of Mr. van der Zwaan, 33, a Dutch national who worked for Skadden in London. The Russian-speaking associate worked on the Tymoshenko report. Mr. van der Zwaan’s profile, since deleted from Skadden’s website, also listed work for Gennady Bogolyubov, a Ukrainian oligarch, when the businessman was sued by his fellow countryman Victor Pinchuk in 2013. He also acted for Mr. Abramovich’s businesses in relation to mining assets in Ukraine, according to the profile. Last summer, the associate’s connections to the oligarch world deepened when he married Eva Khan, a daughter of Mr. Khan, the Russian-Ukrainian billionaire whose interests Skadden has represented in the past alongside Mr. Fridman.” http://www.ft.com/content/741975b0-18ae-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 (http://archive.is/EWc7e)
•Tea Pain (data science blog)—Data Patterns Suggest Trump ToweSpectrum Health Ran a “Stealth Data Machine” With Russia (3/8/2018) “Jared Kushner is currently taking a victory lap, crowin’ about his ‘Stealth Data Machine’ that put Donald Trump over the top in the 2016 race. Let’s pry off the lid and peer into the inner-workings of this ‘Data Machine.’ The Signal in the Noise: Building on the data analysis by @Conspirator0 on Twitter, Tea Pain has stumbled onto a possible ‘signal in the noise’ that opens a window into the data-swappin’ shenanigans going on between Trump Tower, Spectrum Health and Russia’s Alfa Bank during the election. The data traffic, when analyzed, tells a very different story, a story of automated, orchestrated data sharing among multiple sites for a strategic end. Tea Pain originally dismissed this story as a possible red-herring. With the Russia craze at a fever pitch, this activity could be explained by what Tea’s daddy used to say, ‘When you got a new hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ But when Tea Pain saw the data patterns analyzed by Conspiritor0, he knew he’d spotted something mighty familiar: Database Replication. Put a pin in that, more on that later. At first, data analysts were puzzled by what appeared to be random activity with no apparent pattern. Perhaps it was email activity? Maybe money transfers? But there were literally thousands of these IP ‘pings.’[...] Whatever was running, it would hook up, transfer data for a few minutes, then go to sleep for an hour. This was the clue that led Tea Pain to formulate a much clearer working model to explain what we were all seeing: SQL Server Database Replication between multiple sites. What Is Database Replication?: Database Replication is a rather simple concept. When you have a database with millions of records representing hundreds of gigabytes of data, and you would like to keep a copy of that database housed in 2 or more locations, it makes no sense to continually copy the entire database from point A to point B every time a change is made, so you ‘replicate’ it. This allows only the changes made to be sent from one database to another[...] Tea Pain’s working theory is that Russia created a voter targeting database with information gleaned from hacked DNC data rolls and other data rolls ‘acquired’ from other states to feed this growing contact database. That database originated at Russian Intelligence which was in turn replicated to Russia’s Alfa Bank. This is where the ‘data laundering’ takes place, Alfa Bank is the pivot point where the FSB’s data fingerprints are wiped clean. Ironically Russia launders its data at the same place it launders its money. At Trump Tower, more data could merged into this system using various legal sources as well. Spectrum Health could also add value to the data by matching names and addresses in their extensive healthcare databases to harvest email addresses and phone numbers to flesh out this list. All these changes would be promptly replicated back to Russia in a matter of hours. Once back in the hands of Russian Intelligence, this massaged data could be programmatically matched up with social media handles to create a micro-targeted ‘hit list’ for the thousand Russian trolls employed by Putin.” http://web.archive.org/web/20170404010239/https://teapainusa.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/data-patterns-suggest-trump-towerspectrum-health-ran-a-stealth-data-machine-with-russia
•Meduza—The end of privacy ‘Meduza’ takes a hard look at FindFace and the looming prospect of total surveillance (7/14/2016) “In June 2016, N-Tech. Lab sold its technology to Beeline to create the Alfa Future People Electronic music festival app. The festival will be held on July 22 – 24 under Nizhny Novgorod, last year it gathered about 40,000 spectators. The application based on the FACEN algorithm will allow you to send your selfie to the robot, which, in turn, will find other photos of the user in the festival [data]base.” http://web.archive.org/web/20160827095842/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/07/14/the-end-of-privacy
•The Rachel Maddow Show—New look at Trump Org server mystery suggests avenues of inquiry (10/9/2018) “Dexter Filkins, contributor to The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known about unusual communication between a Trump Organization computer server and a server at Russia's Alfa Bank, and what more some well-placed subpoenas could find out.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-look-at-trump-org-server-mystery-suggests-avenues-of-inquiry-1340582467598 (http://archive.is/i5g92)
•The Rachel Maddow Show—Republicans To Put Russian Bank Lawyer In Coveted DoJ Position [Alfa-Bank] http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736659809691528
•CNN—Russian bank sends threatening letter to computer scientist who called for Trump investigation [Alfa-Bank] (3/22/2017) "Alfa-Bank has stepped up its fight against computer scientists who suggested the major Russian bank was in communication with the Trump Organization in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The bank has sent a letter to one of those computer scientists, L. Jean Camp of Indiana University, warning of potential legal action. 'Alfa-Bank is exploring all available options to protect itself from malicious or tortious interference,' it said. 'Those options include litigation.' In recent months, Camp posted the bank's leaked computer logs on her personal website. She has repeatedly said 'this computer traffic should be investigated" by American law enforcement. In its letter, the bank noted that she "disclosed certain computer data regarding Alfa Bank... and encouraged inquiries into supposed links to the Trump Organization.' 'Your activities continue to this day to promote an unwarranted investigation into Alfa-Bank's 'communication' with the Trump Organization,' the letter warned." http://www.facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736726246351551
•Politico—3 Russians named in Trump dossier sue Fusion GPS for libel [Fridman, Alfa-Bank] http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1737103689647140
•Getty Images—Face Control Finds First Commercial Use At Alfa Future People Festival http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736623383028504
•Slate—Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? (10/31/2016) “This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting. [...] In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. ‘I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,’ he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue. More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server’s DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues. (I communicated extensively with Tea Leaves and two of his closest collaborators, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, since they work for firms trusted by corporations and law enforcement to analyze sensitive data. They persuasively demonstrated some of their analytical methods to me—and showed me two white papers, which they had circulated so that colleagues could check their analysis. I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves’ integrity and his unusual access to information. ‘This is someone I know well and is very well-known in the networking community,’ said Camp. ‘When they say something about DNS, you believe them. This person has technical authority and access to data.’) The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. The researchers had initially stumbled in their diagnosis because of the odd configuration of Trump’s server. ‘I’ve never seen a server set up like that,’ says Christopher Davis, who runs the cybersecurity firm HYAS InfoSec Inc. and won a FBI Director Award for Excellence for his work tracking down the authors of one of the world’s nastiest botnet attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump.” http://web.archive.org/web/20161031215320/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
•The New Yorker—Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?; A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers. (10/15/2018) “A set of cryptic data has inspired a years-long argument over its meaning. In June, 2016, after news broke that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, a group of prominent computer scientists went on alert. Reports said that the infiltrators were probably Russian, which suggested to most members of the group that one of the country’s intelligence agencies had been involved. They speculated that if the Russians were hacking the Democrats they must be hacking the Republicans, too. ‘We thought there was no way in the world the Russians would just attack the Democrats,’ one of the computer scientists, who asked to be identified only as Max, told me. [...] As Max and his colleagues searched D.N.S. logs for domains associated with Republican candidates, they were perplexed by what they encountered. ‘We went looking for fingerprints similar to what was on the D.N.C. computers, but we didn’t find what we were looking for,’ Max told me. ‘We found something totally different—something unique.’ In the small town of Lititz, Pennsylvania, a domain linked to the Trump Organization (mail1.trump-email.com) seemed to be behaving in a peculiar way. The server that housed the domain belonged to a company called Listrak, which mostly helped deliver mass-marketing e-mails: blasts of messages advertising spa treatments, Las Vegas weekends, and other enticements. Some Trump Organization domains sent mass e-mail blasts, but the one that Max and his colleagues spotted appeared not to be sending anything. At the same time, though, a very small group of companies seemed to be trying to communicate with it. Examining records for the Trump domain, Max’s group discovered D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia. Alfa Bank’s computers were looking up the address of the Trump server nearly every day. There were dozens of lookups on some days and far fewer on others, but the total number was notable: between May and September, Alfa Bank looked up the Trump Organization’s domain more than two thousand times. [...] One remarkable aspect of Foer’s story [Slate] involved the way that the Trump domain had stopped working. On September 21st, he wrote, the Times had delivered potential evidence of communications to B.G.R., a Washington lobbying firm that worked for Alfa Bank. Two days later, the Trump domain vanished from the Internet. [...] [T]he Trump-Alfa Bank story seemed to fade. The Trump campaign dismissed any connection, saying, ‘The only covert server is the one Hillary Clinton recklessly established in her basement.’ Bloggers and tech journalists assailed the Slate piece online. The cybersecurity researcher Robert Graham called the analysis ‘nonsense,’ and complained, ‘This is why we can’t have nice things on the Internet.’ He pointed out several problems. For instance, Foer’s sources had found that the Trump domain was blocking incoming e-mail, and argued that this was evidence that Trump and Alfa Bank were maintaining a private communications network; in fact, Listrak routinely configured its marketing servers to send e-mail but not to receive it. Graham also noted that the domain was administered not by Trump but by Cendyn, a company in Boca Raton that handled his company’s marketing e-mail. Alfa Bank hired two cybersecurity firms, Mandiant and Stroz Friedberg, to review the data. Both firms reported that they had found no evidence of communications with the Trump Organization. The bank also began trying to uncover the anonymous sources in the Slate piece. Attorneys representing Alfa contacted Jean Camp, telling her that they were considering legal action and asking her to identify the researchers who had assembled the data. [...] Alfa Bank was founded by Mikhail Fridman, in the last years of the Soviet Union. Fridman was born in western Ukraine and studied metallurgy in college. Like many others of his generation, he was introduced to the market economy through hustle. He sold theatre tickets, washed windows, and ran a student discothèque. After the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, Fridman joined the scramble to befriend members of the new government and amass a fortune with help from the state. Along with an economist named Petr Aven, who had previously served as the country’s minister for foreign economic relations, Fridman built Alfa Bank into one of the most successful businesses in the new Russia. Its parent company, Alfa Group, now controls the country’s largest private bank, along with financial institutions in several European nations. Fridman and Aven acquired reputations as brilliant, relentless businessmen. Describing the lawless post-Soviet years to the journalist Chrystia Freeland, who is now the foreign minister of Canada, Fridman said, ‘We were absolute savages.’ In a notorious episode in 2008, a group of Russian companies, including Alfa Group, tried to gain control of a joint venture they’d formed with British Petroleum. The power struggle was so fierce that the C.E.O. of the joint venture, Robert Dudley, felt compelled to leave Russia. The oligarchs kept pushing for control of the BP venture until it was sold to a state-owned petroleum company, for fifty-five billion dollars; Alfa Group’s cut was almost fourteen billion. Alfa Bank prospered during the Yeltsin years and has continued to do so under Putin. Though Fridman and Aven are not part of Putin’s innermost circle, they have managed to avoid the fate of some other oligarchs, who have had assets seized and, in a few cases, been imprisoned, after falling out of favor. Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told me he was impressed that Fridman and Aven had ‘navigated the very difficult world of maintaining their private business interests and not crossing the Kremlin.’ One reason the server story alarmed Alfa Bank was that it threatened the bank’s standing in Washington. Members of Russia’s government and many of its businessmen have been under American economic sanctions since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, but Alfa’s principals and representatives have enjoyed access to U.S. politicians at the highest levels. Fridman and Aven met several times with officials at the Obama White House, discussing such issues as Russia’s effort to gain entrance to the World Trade Organization. (Alfa Bank maintains that it has ‘never advocated for political or trade issues on behalf of the Russian government.’) ‘Fridman and Aven were seen as people that Washington could talk to about U.S.-Russia, because they checked two boxes—they were ‘polite company’ oligarchs, and they could shed light on Putin’s intentions and perspective,’ a senior official in the Obama Administration told me. ‘They got meetings at State and on the Hill and at the White House. And they were understood to be operating with the consent and guidance of Vladimir Putin.’ Alfa is still closely tied to the Russian system, but Fridman and Aven live much of the time in the United Kingdom. If there was a communications link with the Trump Organization, it might have been created without their knowledge. According to experts I spoke to, large Russian companies typically have a member of the intelligence services, either active or retired, working at a senior level. If a company’s services are required in some way, the officer—called a kurator—coördinates them. ‘A company couldn’t say no,’ a Washington-based Russia expert told me. (When asked about this, an Alfa Bank spokesperson said, ‘To our knowledge there are no senior intelligence officials at senior levels at Alfa Bank.’) This past May, I saw Petr Aven in New York, at the Four Seasons Hotel. He had just come from a dinner in Washington, at which he had met a group of prominent Americans, including officials from the White House, to discuss Russia’s economic situation. Aven seemed worried about surveillance; before we sat down, he brought his phone to the other side of the lobby and hid it behind a plant. He wouldn’t say much for the record, but he told me that his bank didn’t have ‘any connection at all with Trump—nothing.’ Aven and Fridman have visited Washington less often since Trump took office. But Trump’s victory appeared to elevate Alfa Bank’s connections there—at least by association. Don McGahn, the White House counsel, came from Jones Day, one of the law firms that represent Alfa Bank in the United States. McGahn brought five Jones Day lawyers with him into the White House; six more were appointed to senior posts in the Administration. Jones Day has done work for businesses belonging to a long list of Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, and Alexander Mashkevich. The firm has also represented the Trump campaign in its dealings with Robert Mueller. For this reason, McGahn secured an ethics waiver that allows him to talk to his old firm when its clients have business before the U.S. government. In June, 2017, Trump nominated Brian Benczkowski, a lawyer who had overseen the Stroz Friedberg report for Alfa Bank, to lead the criminal division of the Justice Department. At his confirmation hearing, Benczkowski said emphatically that Stroz Friedberg, like Mandiant, had rejected the possibility of complicity. The investigation, he said, found that ‘there was no communications link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.’ Democratic senators expressed concern that Benczkowski had taken on work for Alfa Bank; he had been a senior member of Trump’s transition team and had good reason to expect that he would be appointed to a job in the Administration. ‘The client was a Russian bank that is under suspicion of having a direct connection with the Trump campaign,’ Senator Richard Durbin said, during the hearing. [...] [T]he traffic coincided with Paul Manafort’s time as Trump’s campaign manager—but the D.N.S. queries continued after Manafort stepped down. ‘A lot of people are seeing faces in clouds,’ Leto said. The Trump Organization had done little to clarify the matter. In October, 2016, it released a statement denying interactions with Alfa Bank ‘or any Russian entity.’ Instead, it offered a peculiar explanation for the D.N.S. traffic: it had been triggered when ‘an existing banking customer of Cendyn’—the marketing firm—had used the company’s systems to send communications to Alfa Bank. Such a scenario would be highly irregular; it was as if Gmail had allowed a user to send e-mail from another user’s account. ‘It makes no sense,’ Paul told me. Trump’s advocates claimed that the investigations sponsored by Alfa Bank had proved that Alfa and the Trump Organization were not communicating. In fact, they sidestepped the question. Mandiant, one of the cybersecurity firms, said that it was unable to inspect the bank’s D.N.S. logs from 2016, because Alfa retained such records for only twenty-four hours. The other firm, Stroz Friedberg, gave the same explanation for why it, too, was “unable to verify” the data. As Jones’s team vetted the data, they examined various possible explanations. One was malware, which had played a role in the hack of the D.N.C.’s computers. Most malware has ‘distinctive patterns of behavior,’ Camp told me. It is typically sent out in a blast, aimed simultaneously at multiple domains. There is a ‘payload’—a mechanism that activates the malicious activity—and a ‘recruitment mechanism,’ which enables the malware to take over parts of a vulnerable computer. None of the experts whom Jones assembled found any evidence of this behavior on the Trump server. ‘Malware doesn’t keep banging on the door like that,’ Paul said. A second possibility was marketing e-mail. After the Slate article appeared, some commentators suggested that Trump’s server had innocently sent promotional e-mails to Alfa Bank, and that a computer there had responded with queries designed to verify the identity of the sender. [...] The timing and the frequency of the D.N.S. lookups also did not suggest spam, Paul and Leto believed. Mass-marketing e-mails are typically sent by an automated process, one after another, in an unbroken rhythm. The Alfa queries seemed to fall into two categories. Some came in a steady pulse, while others arrived irregularly—sometimes many in a day, sometimes a few. ‘The timing of the communication was not random, and it wasn’t regular-periodic,’ Paul said. ‘It was a better match for human activity.’ But, if the Trump server wasn’t sending or receiving e-mail, what could explain the traffic? There was the possibility of ‘spoofing’—essentially, faking an identity. [...] As Jones’s team sifted through explanations for the traffic, they began constructing their own theory. ‘What you have here is a minimally viable technical footprint of a small number of people who are using what I suspect is an ad-hoc system to communicate,’ Paul said. ‘Anytime the F.B.I. or anyone else pulls apart a cyber-crime organization, there is always some communication structure that’s used for command and control. That’s where the high-value communications happen.’ (Max and his colleagues did not see any D.N.S. evidence that the Trump Organization was attempting to access the server; they speculated that the organization was using a virtual private network, or V.P.N., a common security measure that obscures users’ digital footprints.) If this was a communications mechanism, it appeared to have been relatively simple, suggesting that it had been set up spontaneously and refined over time. Because the Trump Organization did not have administrative control of the server, Paul and Leto theorized that any such system would have incorporated software that one of the parties was already using. ‘The likely scenario is not that the people using the server were incredibly sophisticated networking geniuses doing something obscure and special,’ Max said. ‘The likely scenario is that they adapted a server and vender already available to them, which they felt was away from prying eyes.’ Leto told me that he envisioned ‘something like a bulletin-board system.’ Or it could have been an instant-messaging system that was part of software already in use on the server. Kramer, of Listrak, insisted that his company’s servers were used exclusively for mass marketing. ‘We only do one thing here,’ he told me. But Listrak’s services can be integrated with numerous Cendyn software packages, some of which allow instant messaging. One possibility is Metron, used to manage events at hotels. In fact, the Trump Organization’s October, 2016, statement, blaming the unusual traffic on a ‘banking customer’ of Cendyn, suggested that the communications had gone through Metron, which supports both messaging and e-mail. The parties might also have been using Webmail—e-mail that leaves few digital traces, other than D.N.S. lookups. Or, Paul and Leto said, they could have been communicating through software used to compose marketing e-mails. They might have used a method called foldering, in which messages are written but not sent; instead, they are saved in a drafts folder, where an accomplice who also has access to the account can read them. ‘This is a very common way for people to communicate with each other who don’t want to be detected,’ Leto told me. David Petraeus, when he was the director of the C.I.A., used this method to exchange intimacies—and to share classified information—with his lover, Paula Broadwell. In June, an attorney for the Mueller investigation accused Paul Manafort of using foldering to facilitate secret communications. Given the limitations of D.N.S. data, none of the independent experts I spoke to could be certain of what Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization were doing. Some of them cautioned that it was impossible even to guess at every way that an e-mail system might malfunction. A senior analyst at a D.N.S.-service provider said, ‘Things can get messed up in unexpected ways.’ But Paul and Leto maintained that they had considered and rejected every scenario that they had encountered in decades of cybersecurity work. ‘Is it possible there is an innocuous explanation for all this?’ Paul said. ‘Yes, of course. And it’s also possible that space aliens did this. It’s possible—just not very likely.’ [...] If Trump and Alfa Bank [...] were communicating, what might they have been talking about? Max and some of the other scientists I spoke to theorized that they may have been using the system to signal one another about events or tasks that had to be performed: money to be transferred, for instance, or data to be copied. ‘My guess is that, whenever someone wanted to talk, they would do a D.N.S. lookup and then route the traffic somewhere else,’ Richard Clayton, of the University of Cambridge, said. Camp also speculated that the system may have been used to coördinate the movement of data. She noted that Cambridge Analytica, which was working for the Trump campaign, took millions of personal records from Facebook. In Camp’s scenario, these could have been transferred to the Russian government, to help guide its targeting of American voters before the election. The researchers I spoke with were careful to point out that the limits of D.N.S. data prevent them from going beyond speculation. If employees of the companies were talking, the traffic reveals nothing about who they were or what they were saying; it is difficult to rule out something as banal as a protracted game of video poker. ‘If I’m a cop, I’m not going to take this to the D.A. and say we’re ready to prosecute,’ Leto said. ‘I’m going to say we have enough to ask for a search warrant.’ More complete information could be difficult to obtain. This March, after Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the committee’s Democrats filed a dissent, arguing that there were many matters still to be investigated, including the Trump Organization’s connections to Alfa Bank. The Democrats implored the majority to force Cendyn to turn over computer data that would help determine what had happened. Those records could show who in the Trump Organization used the server. There would probably also be a record of who shut down the Trump domain after the Times contacted Alfa Bank. Cendyn might have records of any outgoing communications sent by the Trump Organization. But the request for further investigation is unlikely to proceed as long as Republicans hold the majority. ‘We’ve all looked at the data, and it doesn’t look right,’ a congressional staffer told me. ‘But how do you get to the truth?’ The enigma, for now, remains an enigma. The only people likely to finally resolve the question of Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization are federal investigators.” http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign (http://archive.is/MSR3j)
[“No collusion”? Collusion.]

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[Very long, but I know you have nothing better to do] [EDIT: Tried to fix formatting. And for those who live in terrible places - take a joke!]
When NBA players reach the rare points of their careers when they actually have the unfettered discretion to choose where they want to live and play basketball, they choose different places for different reasons. Where would he have the best opportunity to contend for a championship? Who can pay him the most money? Where can he be the number one option and play the way he wants to play? Who has the best coach and front office? Which city has the best weather? Which city has the best clubs? The best strip clubs? Proximity to models? Proximity to Kardashians? Where did he grow up?
Recently, every slight compliment that Kevin Durant bestows on a team or a town leads to wild speculation of where he will play next season. As the biggest free agent since Lebron took his talents to South Beach in 2010 and since he took his somewhat fading talents back to Lake Erie in 2014, there is good reason to speculate about KD’s future. In all likelihood, his carefully crafted decision will lead to five years of playing for the Larry O’Brien trophy no matter which jersey he dons.
The complexities of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the increasing intelligence of most front offices in the league (sorry Sacramento), and the ability to be marketable from anywhere in a globalized economy have changed the way that players make decisions. It is no longer about forcing yourself to the biggest market, which historically, have been the places where a player was most likely to win. A monstrous television deal that will only increase in the next couple of years has leveled the playing field. As has a CBA where a team actually has to plan and make smart decisions to manage their salary cap situation.
But let’s pretend that it’s just about the city and the history of the franchise (but not the active basketball operations, coach and players. So – for example – we can say Michael Jordan played there! But, we cannot factor in Fred Hoiberg, the general current management of the team or the fact that you can play with Jimmy Butler). All else being equal – which NBA locations/teams are the most attractive to NBA players? Remember, we are looking at this from the perspective of young millionaires.
BIG CITY, BRIGHT LIGHTS:

Los Angeles Lakers

It used to be like the rap wars of the mid-1990s. East Coast or West Coast? Biggie or Pac? New York or L.A.? Los Angeles had Hollywood opportunities (What if I told you that you get play a 7 foot genie, star alongside Francis Capra and Da Brat and be directed by the genius behind The Cutting Edge and three episodes of Miami Vice?) Jack Nicholson watching courtside, young actresses (and aspiring ones) flooding the Forum Club and then Hyde at the Staples Center. You could have a mansion in Beverly Hills or on the Strand in Manhattan Beach. A player could enjoy the finest well-done steaks at Mastro’s.
Or you could live in a Park Avenue penthouse. Give high-fives to Jay-Z. Get your boy a guest spot on Law & Order SVU. 4:00 a.m. nights with models in Tribeca and SOHO. And most importantly, being in the center of the media universe could make you as marketable as…Patrick Ewing?
But times have changed. In the age of Twitter and Vine, League Pass, and nationally televised games, no matter where you are, players don’t needNew York. They don’t need L.A. But they still want L.A. The perfect weather and the pull of Hollywood, which remains the epicenter of the entertainment industry. A place where you can blend in and be afforded a little more privacy because residents are more excited by encounters with Jax fromVanderpump Rules.
Los Angeles remains the place where you can play for one of the two most storied teams in the league, while being able to roll along Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible maroon Bentley on a 78 degree January afternoon.
It is the Lakers history that puts L.A. at the top. Veterans grew up watching the late Magic years. Younger players grew up watching the Kobe-Shaq dynasty or the Kobe-Pau years. The games under the Showtime lighting, framed yellow jerseys and 16 championship banners just feel different. It is one thing to be an NBA player. It is a whole other to be a Laker.

Miami Heat

It’s pretty much Los Angeles, but with the occasional hurricane, worse humidity, and Cuban telenovelas instead of big-budget motion pictures. Miami still has the beach and the clear and beautiful warm waters of South Florida. NBA players love neon lights and other bright shit, making South Beach a favorite. There are the palm trees and the waterfront mansions. A player can still date models. Prime 112 has tempura lobster (A Jalen Rose favorite).
Alonzo Mourning and the late 1990s teams brought legitimacy to a new organization. Dwyane Wade and Pat Riley turned them into a premiere franchise and Lebron and the big-three era catapulted the Heat to arguably becoming the most marquee NBA franchise, other than the Lakers and Spurs, in the post-Jordan era.
Also, in case you forgot every Cribs episode, never underestimate an NBA player’s adoration for Scarface.
BIG CITY, NOT AS BRIGHT LIGHTS:

Los Angeles Clippers

Basically the Lakers, but with selfies hanging inside Staples instead of championship banners and nostalgia for Eric Piatkowski instead of Magic Johnson.
The trash organization gained legitimacy when the NBA evicted their slumlord owner and brought in a tech billionaire whose products are not used by a single person in Los Angeles, most of whom are working on Broad City spec scripts at their local coffee shop.
The marketability factor is still present with opportunities for players to be the king of insurance or mid-tier Korean family sedans.
It’s still Los Angeles and a player can always go out on Sunset and pretend he is on the Lakers.

New York Knicks

We pretend the Knicks are the unheralded kings of free agency. That everyone dreams of playing at the Garden and living in New York. But unless you grew up in the five boroughs - no one liked Ewing, Starks, Oak and Anthony Mason (RIP). Most NBA players would not know if Bernard King played on the Knicks between 1983-1987 or 1963-1967. The oldest active player in the NBA (the professor, Andre Miller) was born approximately three years AFTER the Knicks last won an NBA championship. Sorry, the Knicks aren’t a premiere NBA organization. And this is without even mentioning James Dolan.
And - contrary to popular opinion - New York City is not the premiere place to live if you are an NBA superstar. A player would rather live in a sprawling 8,000 square foot mansion with a regulation sized basketball court, shark tank, nine-hole golf course, and a Ritz Carlton quality pool than pay $10 million for a 2,000 square foot apartment or brownstone.
Your average NBA player would rather eat at The Cheesecake Factory than the awesome hole-in-the-wall Pho spot or David Chang’s latest Michelin rated restaurant.
NBA players aren’t known to spend Saturday afternoons strolling the Museum of Modern Art or checking out trendy and provocative performance art projects in Bushwick warehouses.
It isn’t 1981, so nearly every NBA city has some semblance of nightlife where a player can enjoy a bottle of Dom P, VIP area, and have a flock of jersey-chasers clamoring for attention.
NBA players don’t fuck with the Subway.
New York is really cold during approximately 80% of the NBA regular season.
But even though I spent approximately 300 words shitting on New York, it’s still New York. Just ask JR Smith.
[NOTE – THIS ABOVE PARAGRAPH DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU IF YOU ARE MARRIED TO LA LA].

Brooklyn Nets

The team’s history is buried in a swamp in New Jersey. The legacy of the team since it has moved to Brooklyn centers around former stars who were collective decades removed from their primes.
NBA players are not Lena Dunham.
It’s still New York, but not quite.
Basically the New York Clippers.
Having a Russian Oligarch multi-billionaire for an owner is pretty cool.
NOT L.A. OR MIAMI, BUT THE WEATHER IS NICE

Houston Rockets

It’s hot. There is good food and lots of chain restaurants. Huge houses for cheap and no state taxes. Paul Wall, Mike Jones (who?) and Chamillionaire were at the height of their popularity when most of these guys were in junior high and high school.
Hakeem might help you with your footwork.
Allegedly, great strip clubs.

Dallas Mavericks

It’s hot. There are quality steakhouses and lots of chain restaurants. Huge houses for cheap and no state taxes. Unfortunately, no strong rap history.
No one to help you with your footwork, but Cuban provides the best perks (remember when he put a Playstation 2 in every player’s locker back in 2002?)
A lot of players are Dallas Cowboys fans because they are front-running assholes who grew up with the Irvin, Emmett and Aikman teams.
Allegedly, great strip clubs.
And if Chandler Parsons chose to play there you know it is a good time.

Phoenix Suns

It’s really hot. There are lots of chain restaurants. Huge houses for cheap, but there are state taxes. Unfortunately, no strong rap history.
NBA players treat Phoenix as if it is a distant suburb of Los Angeles.
Few models, but plenty of surgically enhanced cleavage and Arizona State Coeds.
More NBA players than you think golf.
Pool parties where players can wear socks, rubber Nike sandals, and two pairs of oversized basketball shorts.
The Steve Nash teams revolutionized basketball and rescued the NBA from the 84-79 point games era. Barkley took them to the Finals against Jordan and maybe a player can get invited to his poker game (hope he makes a max-level salary!)

Orlando Magic

Players have been known to live on lakes and jet-ski to each other’s houses to play Madden, which sounds like exactly the kind of life I would have liked to have led when I was 17.
The weather is really nice and it’s almost tropical.
It’s basically Miami, but rednecks instead of Latin people and New York retirees, lakes instead of the ocean, and strip malls and Disney World instead of any semblance of nightlife. Those D12 teams were underrated (beat Lebron in his prime), but no one has ever said “Dwight Howard did it, so you know it is a good idea.” Some goodwill remains from the Penny-Shaq era. Everyone forgets that T-Mac and Grant Hill played here.
THE CITIES THAT SHOULD BE HIGHER

Atlanta Hawks

It is a mystery why Atlanta is not a more popular NBA city. You would think Atlanta would be at the center of the Venn diagram of where rappers and NBA players want to live. But apparently, NBA players don’t care too much about fraternizing with 2 Chainz, Outkast, Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri, Gucci Mane, Lil Jon, and Young Jeezy.
It isn’t San Diego, but the weather is nice. The food is good. You can buy a Southern estate for about the price of a condo in Inglewood. You might be able to get a cameo on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Freaknik is in Atlanta, even though its heyday has long since passed.
It’s at the top of the list of where traveling NBA players play like shit. Atlanta has arguably the best clubs of NBA cities that are not Los Angeles, New York, or Miami.
Of course, I have to bring up The Gold Club, where you can feel free to hang around a little bit and talk to them, then leave.
It’s one of the two major African-American metropoles in the country.
Highlights of the Hawks history are basically limited to the 2015 team getting swept in the conference finals, that time Joe Johnson hit a three, and Dominique Wilkins almost (he should have) beating MJ in the 1988 dunk contest. Maybe that’s why guys don’t want to play here.

Washington Wizards

Affectionately nicknamed Chocolate City.
But basketball has really never mattered in DC outside of Georgetown hoops.
THEY ARE REALLY GOOD AT BASKETBALL, BUT THAT’S ABOUT IT:

San Antonio Spurs

What would San Antonio be without the Spurs? The answer is El Paso. No one wants to live in El Paso.
This is a good reminder that this list does not consider the strength of the present-day organization, but it does factor in the history of the organization.
Therefore, the Spurs get a bump for having five titles, four of which no one cares much about. There’s a better chance of Fox News covering a Bernie Sanders rally than Hardwood Classics ever airing a game from the New Jersey Nets and San Antonio Spurs 2003 Finals.
San Antonio is, in essence, Dallas or Houston, but they tend to fare worse in the most obese cities rankings, more residents speak Spanish, and the chain restaurants are next to a dirty river.
I am not sure any NBA players remember the Alamo.
REMEMBER THAT WE ARE NOT FACTORING IN STEPH CURRY:

Golden State Warriors

Two years ago you would probably agree with this placement. Now you probably think I am insane, stupid or both.
But in my completely arbitrary and not very well contemplated rules for this exercise, you don’t get to factor in playing with Steph and company, but you do get to factor in the insane current popularity of the franchise, which has been propelled by Steph and company. So – ummm – make sense?
Until this ongoing Warriors run, Golden State was akin to Milwaukee west.
The years of Run TMC were all too brief and the most prominent superstar (before Steph) claimed by this franchise shot free throws underhand and is widely regarded as the most despised Top-50 player and champion in league history.
And as much as tech-bros are popularizing Northern California, NBA players aren’t exactly swayed by the most European of NBA cities. Other than Boris Diaw and Tony Parker, not many NBA guys would enjoy a nice red at a sidewalk café on a foggy San Francisco afternoon and coordinate team day-trips to Napa.
BIG CITIES, SHIT IT’S COLD:

Chicago Bulls

The greatest of all-time wore number 23. No NBA team’s identity is as much ingrained in the image of a single player. The Lakers are the Lakers even without one of Kareem, West, Wilt, Magic, Shaq, or Kobe. The Celtics are the Celtics even without one of Bill Russell, Bird, KG, or Pierce.
The Bulls are the Timberwolves without Jordan. MJ has rewritten the history of the franchise so extensively that people forget that they were one of the league’s most dogshit franchises when they drafted Jordan out of North Carolina.
To play in Chicago is to follow in Jordan’s footsteps, but unfortunately, the shadow he casts is so large that players are hesitant to fill those Air Jordan’s. Lebron – allegedly – scoffed when Chicago’s pitch to him in 2010 was exactly that. The Bulls sent him a pair of Jordans with an accompanying message: “Do you dare to fill these shoes?” We know how he answered. “Fuck no!” And that seems to be the attitude that modern superstars hold.
Why would I go to a team where – no matter what I do and how many championships I win – I’ll never be Michael?
Chicago is the pride of the prairie. It’s the grandest American city outside of L.A. or NYC. But it is also the windy city and the most frigid big city in the country, where gusts off of Lake Michigan will literally pain your bones. Unless you are an opera connoisseur, it doesn’t hold much appeal over many of the NBA’s mid-sized cities.
There’s a reason in Kanye West’s Good Life, he raps: “The good life, it feel like Atlanta, it feel like L.A., it feel like Miami. It feel like N.Y., summertime Chi, ahhh, now throw your hands up in the sky.”
Summertime Chi. As in – great place to play for the Cubs! But stay the fuck away during the NBA season.

Boston Celtics

How can the team with the most championships in NBA history be as low as 15? Why are the Celtics ranked below the Bulls when they have 11 more titles?
Because even though Boston has the richest basketball history in the NBA, it also has - well - Boston history. Just ask Bill Russell about that.
Even if Boston is a more friendly city to African-Americans in 2016 than the city was in 1966, it still has never been a free agent destination. The recent Big 3 era was orchestrated via trades rather than free agency, even if KG ultimately agreed to join Pierce and Jesus Shuttlesworth to win his first and only ring. But he was apprehensive, even calling Bill Russell to seek advice.
Boston is a tremendous place to live, to go to college or graduate school, to be Irish, and the optimal place to be if you’re a fan of the Dropkick Murphy’s, where bagpipe-punk ballads are bar staples on far more than just St. Patrick’s Day.
Memories of the Garden and Bird and the other several hall-of-famers certainly serves as a strong recruiting factor.
But when New England poet Robert Frost poses the question about two roads diverged in a yellow wood, the NBA millionaire is not going to choose either road that leads to the frigid Boston winters, no matter how pretty the foliage when the season begins.

Toronto Raptors

It is Canada. Which is not the United States. Which means it is a pain in the ass to deal with currency conversion. And you have to file taxes (which are higher in Canada) in two separate countries.
Toronto is possibly the most metropolitan and lively large North American city outside of New York. Because I have not been to Toronto as an adult, I Googled the best clubs in the city to get a feel for how well those Canada nights complement the life of an NBA star. Number one as of July 2015 was Uniun, which sounds like a failing Vegas club at New York, New York, which not so successfully attempts to emulate some chic Manhattan spot. Here is the description: “Owned by the Ariana Grande of the Toronto club scene, Charles Khabouth…” So yeah, apparently a Lebanese Canadian club owner and hotelier in his fifties is the Ariana Grande of the Toronto club scene. Makes sense.
Some other Union gems:
BEERS ON TAP: None, but bottles of Heineken, Coors, Corona, and Molson Canadian.
BAR SNACKS: None as of yet.
WHO GOES THERE: Dressed-up fans of electronic music, beautiful people in their 20s and 30s.
That place sounds TERRIBLE. I bet Jonas Valanciunas has a standing table reservation.
In Toronto, English is still the primary language. While perhaps too similar to the Bratislava clubs in Eurotrip, there are numerous nightlife options. There is an abundance of diversity. Most importantly for NBA players, there is a Benihana!
But it is cold. Really cold. Like colder than Boston, Chicago or New York cold. And if you’re learning anything from this list, it’s that NBA players do not like being in the cold. Which is a primary reason that the Western Conference has been dominant for two decades.
Even if NBA players have a debaucherous time on the road when traveling up to The North - it’s hard to shake the perceptions that are formed in childhood. And nearly every NBA player grew up thinking of Canada, even places like Toronto, as an uninhabited frozen wasteland with the occasional igloo and Eskimo.
Three years ago Toronto would be ten spots lower on this list, but it’s helpful to have your ambassador and biggest celebrity fan be the most popular rapper on the planet. Drake might be worth more to this franchise than Lebron is worth to Cleveland.
MEMPHIS:

Memphis Grizzlies

It’s a smaller town than the warmer cities listed above and the weather is less desirable. It’s one of the top cities for BBQ in the country, and perhaps, the best of any NBA city. Beale Street is apparently fun.
It is more of a blue-collar city than NBA players typically prefer, but at least it is not in the Rust Belt.
It is rated higher than similarly sized and geographically located cities Charlotte and New Orleans because the grit & grind era gave Memphis a distinct basketball identity that resonates with fans. The three most exhilarating things currently in the NBA are Russell Westbrook attacking the rim at full speed, Steph Curry pulling up from 40 and the Memphis PA system bumping Whoop That Trick during a crucial fourth quarter playoffs timeout.
If only NBA players were bigger fans of Elvis.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS:

Portland Trailblazers

The last remaining frontier of professional basketball in the Great American Northwest. Portland, as a city, has undergone a surge of popularity among America’s twenty-somethings, inspiring such articles as the Washington Post’s Why quirky Portland is winning the battle for young college grads.
Oregon has lakes, streams, rivers, trees and picturesque mountains. It also has one of America’s most infamous foodie scenes and thousands of clones of young Bill Walton, albeit the political and socially-conscious new anti-yuppies of Portland lack The Big Redhead’s size and athletic ability. But riding a fixie bike does keep those quads strong.
While natural scenic beauty and hiking have not historically been strong sellers to NBA free agents, Portland - or at least nearby Beaverton - does have one thing that turns the heads of young athletes…The Swoosh.
The Blazers also boast an NBA title, one of the better logo/color scheme combinations in professional sports, a devoted cult-like local following, and hall-of-famers across multiple generations.
If only it did not rain so fucking much.

Denver Nuggets

I’d personally rather live in Denver than any NBA city outside of Los Angeles, but I reckon I enjoy snowboarding, the mountains and IPAs more than your average professional basketball player.
My team-building strategy for the Nuggets would be to target all Euro stars and convince them that living in the mile high city is like residing in an eighties ski movie, which it probably is for Gallinari. Vail and Aspen are surely suitable stand-ins for the Swiss Alps.
I would also try to work on getting Kendrick Lamar a residency at Red Rocks.
Unfortunately, among the most forgotten teams and players from the eighties were the really fun Fat Lever and Alex English led scoring machines. Fresh in the minds of most players is Melo’s slow and painful mid-season exit and there’s no other recent period in Nuggets history which serves as a draw for free agents.
But once the NBA gets out of the weed regulation business and ceases testing for non-performance enhancing drugs and non-narcotics, you can go ahead and bump the Nugs up a spot or ten.
THE PROCESS:

Philadelphia 76ers

The city of brotherly love is the fifth largest United States city. But just because it is big doesn’t mean that there is anything notable about the town. No one talks about the restaurants or the bars or the museums or anything that has really happened since the 18th century. There is the liberty bell, so that’s cool? Most people only know about Philadelphia because of Ben Franklin book reports in fourth grade.
Alllen Iverson was just interviewed by Complex Magazine and said his favorite thing to do in Philly was go to TGI Fridays.
But people remember Dr. J and Moses Malone. And more recently, Allen Iverson had his best years in Philly and brought them to the Finals and I am not going to underestimate AI’s impact, as he is up there with Jordan as one of the most iconic and culturally transformative players to ever pick up an orange ball.
Too bad Sam Hinkie has worked his hardest to demolish a once proud franchise’s reputation.
At least Philadelphia is not Milwaukee or Detroit.
NICE CLIMATE, TOO REGIONAL:

New Orleans Pelicans

I don’t have a lot of history to go on here, since The Big Easy has been a permanent NBA town for about a decade.
It seems like a pleasant enough place to live. It is inexpensive. The cuisine is excellent. You can hear the best Jazz of your life on an unassuming street corner. You can legally walk down the street with a drink in your hand. You can legally gamble. No one seems to mind if you urinate outside a bar in the French Quarter at five in the morning. There are Southern mansions and a quieter life available in the burbs. Cash Money records reps the 504, but unfortunately, I’m not sure Lil Wayne carries the same weight in 2016 as he did when he ruled the aughts. There’s an NCIS here now.
The weather is mostly mild during the NBA season, but the worst natural disaster in United States history likely still looms large in player’s minds.
Even if it is home to Mardi Gras and is essentially the Vegas of the American South, it’s still a very small town and that historically has not played well with NBA dudes.
I just have the feeling it’s more likely for a player’s bachelor party than it is as a permanent residence. But New Orleans’ place on this list should be revisited in five or so years.

Charlotte Hornets

Everyone in Charlotte is a bank teller, financial analyst at a large commercial bank, works for the Federal Reserve or worships at the altar of Dale Earnhardt. I am surprised that the professional sports teams in the state don’t have a permanent 3 patched onto the breast of the team jerseys.
Charlotte is where SEC and ACC grads end up if they didn’t get jobs in Atlanta.
Other than middle-management at a regional office and NASCAR, when I think of Charlotte, one other thing comes to mind - college hoops. Jordan, Worthy, Stackhouse, Vince, Sheed and Dean Smith. Tar Heels versus Blue Devils.
Pro basketball has already died once in Charlotte, but was singlehandedly resurrected by the greatest basketball player of all-time who just so happened to be from the state. If MJ was raised in Detroit, L.A. or Chicago, the Charlotte Hornets would be the Seattle Sonics 2.0 or the Kansas City Jayhawks.
But every male between 30 and 35 years old, no matter where they grew up in the U.S., had a teal Hornets Starter Jacket. If the Hornets want to increase their free agency rankings, they need to go back to their early-to-mid 90s LJ and Zo throwback attire. They also need to make Grandmama the permanent mascot.
And at least for the next five to seven years - the front office can lure free agents with 50 yard line seats to see Cam Newton.
FACTORY TOWNS AND KIND OF A CALIFORNIA TOWN:

Detroit Pistons

The epicenter of the desolate remains of once proud American manufacturing. If you sign with the Pistons, they may be able to hook you up with a good deal on a Ford Explorer.
Living options are between a dilapidated warehouse in downtown Detroit or a 10,000 square foot mansion in a Pleasantville-esque suburb, which are similar to the Northside burbs of Chicago, but if Chicago itself no longer existed and it was even colder.
But the Pistons do well with adopting the persona of Detroit toughness. From the Bad Boys to the Billups-Rip-Tayshaun-Sheed-Ben Wallace squad.
So a player can feel good about being perceived as a badass, but will soon learn why everyone respects his toughness and resilience, he has to live in Detroit.

Sacramento Kings

It sounds appealing to work and live in the capital of California, until you realize that the capital of California is Sacramento.
The current Kings arena – Sleep Train (formerly Arco) – is located in a cow pasture.
The best thing about Sacramento is the approximate 100 mile distance to Lake Tahoe and 90 mile distance to San Francisco. When your best selling point is being located not that far away from better places, it does not speak all that highly about your city. Sacramento…at least we’re not Barstow.
The Maloof bros sold, so there is no longer access to free Vegas depravity.
The Webber-Bibby-Peja-Vlade years were fun, but the franchise has since slowly slid into complete chaos and incompetence.
They should just ditch the new digs and move to Orange County (which would immediately be a top three free agent destination), where players can live in Newport and Laguna Beach and not have to wait until retirement to hit on cougars at Javier’s.

Indiana Pacers

Reggie Miller scoring eight points in nine seconds and miming the choking sign to Spike Lee single-handedly keeps the Pacers out of the bottom of the barrel.
Aside from Hoosiers, Bobby Knight, Peyton Manning before the neck, Andrew Luck, Parks and Recreation, the beginning of The Jackson 5 and the non-NASCAR kind of racing, I don’t know much about Indiana. I know Notre Dame is in South Bend, but the Irish pretty much exist independently of the State.
Apparently you can fish there, which Roy Hibbert and Paul George taught us that a friendly team fishing expedition can heal deep wounds.
So…here we are. Indiana!

Cleveland Cavaliers

I’ll start with the obvious – if I was factoring in playing with Lebron, the Cavs would be near the top of these rankings. Although, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving might argue differently.
Before Lebron Round One, the most iconic Cavs moment was Jordan nailing the double-pump, buzzer beating jumper in the 1989 playoffs and sending Craig Ehlo crying to his knees.
During the early Lebron years, the Cavs are most remembered for wilting twice in the playoffs and being subsequently deserted by The King for the number two squad on this list.
Cleveland rests on the shores of water so disgusting and polluted, that Lake Erie has caught on fire MULTIPLE times, including the 1969 Cuyohoga fire that played a major role in inspiring the formation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act of 1972. That same fire even had a cameo in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax.
The stench of failure is so strong in Cleveland that the Indians were the franchise chosen to be featured in Major League. Other than Jim Brown, Otto Graham and Lebron, Roger Dorn is probably the city’s most treasured professional athlete.
At least there is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is basically a Hard Rock Café without the food.
ONE DAY WE SHALL FIND OUT:

Oklahoma City Thunder

One of my good friends and former college roommates is from Oklahoma City. His dad is an incredibly nice and smooth man who happens to own an oil and gas business and whose world view is equally shaped by attending college in Austin in the 1970s. If he were so inclined, I’d let him frack in my living room.
Here is what he has to say about living in Oklahoma City: We may not have the beach and we may not have the mountains, but people sure smile and say hello when you pass them on the street.
While it may have warmth and friendly strangers, I don’t know if that is enough for NBA free agents. And until Durant and Westbrook are no longer in the Sooner State, we will not find out.
THAT KG FELLA WAS REAL TENACIOUS, DON’T YA KNOW?:

Minnesota Timberwolves

It is cold in Detroit. It is cold in Milwaukee. It is cold in Chicago. But only one United States city has an entire downtown system of enclosed pedestrian footbridges (Minneapolis Skyway System), so residents can walk in a climate-controlled environment year round. How fucking freezing does it have to be for a city to build an infrastructure so people never have to feel the outside air?
Minneapolis is one of the more underrated American cities, but that designation mostly applies between Memorial and Labor Day. A July day on Lake Minnetonka is a Kenny Powers wet dream.
But unless you’re an ice fishing enthusiast, there are better places for the young and absurdly rich to spend their winters.
It does not help that the most notable retired former Timberwolf is Wally Szczerbiak.
Light Beer and Sausages:

Milwaukee Bucks

Kareem played here, but after six seasons, forced a trade to the Lakers. In return, the Bucks received four guys I am certain you have never heard of. Oscar Robertson played here, but played the majority of his prime in Cincinnati. Ray Allen played here, but was traded after six and a half seasons along with a collection of spare parts for old Gary Payton (who left the next offseason) and Desmond Mason (who would play two more seasons for the Bucks). Expect to see the Bucks trade Giannis in three years for Deron Williams and Frank Kaminsky.
The Bucks did have one of the better forgotten runs in NBA history between the 1970 and 1974 seasons, where they won an average of nearly 61 games per year. Their 1971 championship run led by Kareem and The Big O was among the most dominant in history, where they went 12-2 through the playoffs including a finals sweep.
Most outside of Milwaukee forget that the Bucks’ success continued after Kareem and Oscar departed, when Sidney Moncrief led them to a decade of near excellence in the Reagan era. But their strong eighties teams have been greatly overshadowed by those great and better 76ers, Celtics and Pistons squads.
As for the rest of Wisconsin - it is shitty beer, the Packers, cheese, Madison and whatever the hell is going on in Manitowoc County.
The New Orleans Jazz Moved to Utah, Where They don’t Allow Music:

Utah Jazz

The State of Utah is about 61% Mormon and 91% white. Approximately 1.27% of the population is African-American. No other U.S. state that has an NBA team has a smaller African-American population.
If the Jazz could guarantee the NBA players/budding film producers that their projects would be admitted to Sundance, they might be able to field a dangerous team. A Baron Davis/Kobe/Lebron core could perhaps secure the 7th seed in the West.
The Jazz do boast a rich history and a rabid fan base. But the very smart and talented front office knows that they operate in Utah, so they are better served building through the draft, where you can retain players against their will.